Secondary navigation

Search

Search form

Sex/gender analysis: Links between psychosocial work factors and stress not always as expected

IWH study examines differences between men and women when it comes to the links between stress and psychosocial work factors such as supervisor support, job control and job security

Published: August 6, 2018

Sometimes sex and gender differences are not as one would expect. A study examining the influences of workplace psychosocial factors on stress among men and women is a case in point. An article about that study, authored by IWH’s Kathy Padkapayeva, was published in the special edition of Annals of Work Exposures and Health (AWEH) in April (doi:10.1093/annweh/wxy014).

Going into the study, the research team had expected to see differences between men and women when it came to factors such as low job control, low job security, low co-worker support and low supervisor support. The team thought that the link between low co-worker or low supervisor support and stress levels would be stronger among women.

This builds on research elsewhere suggesting that, as a result of both social and biological (physiological and hormonal) differences, women are more likely to seek out and use social support in response to stress, says Padkapayeva. The theory is that a ‘tend-and-befriend’ response is more likely to prevail among women than the well-known ‘fight-or-flight’ response.

IWH studies on gender differences in work and health turn up some surprises

Many people will remember Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's response—Because it's 2015—when he was asked about naming an equal number of women and men to his first cabinet. But across the Canadian labour force, gender parity in occupations and industries is far from a reality. The jobs and industries that were dominated by men or women in 1988 have remained just as segregated along sex and gender lines today as they were three decades ago.

That’s why work and health researchers need to apply a sex and gender lens to their work, says Dr. Peter Smith, a senior scientist at the Institute for Work & Health (IWH) and a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) research chair in gender, work and health. The experiences of men and women are still so different, both inside and outside the labour market, says Smith. To ignore this is to miss an important part of the picture about how work and health are related.

In his work as a CIHR research chair, Smith recently co-edited a special issue of the Annals of Work Exposures and Health (AWEH), Vol. 62, No. 4, May 2018. The issue focused exclusively on sex/gender-based analyses of occupational health issues. The interest we received through the abstract submission and peer-review process exceeded our expectations, says Smith. It speaks to the increased momentum of research in this area.

But more needs to be done, he adds, particularly in developing research methods that can help us better describe how sex or gender interact with labour market and workplace exposures to produce differences in health outcomes. We can’t just assume that findings among men can be generalized to women, or vice versa, he notes. By taking a sex/gender lens to our research, we can produce findings that are relevant to all workers, not just to men or women only.

Described in this editorial package are the findings of recent studies by IWH scientists that examined sex and gender differences in work and health outcomes. Two were published in the special edition of AWEH, co-edited by Smith.

However, an analysis of self-reported stress levels and workplace factors in a large, nationally representative sample of Canadians did not fully bear this out. The study drew on the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey, a wide-ranging survey on health conditions and behaviours administered by Statistics Canada, with a sample size of 25,000 people.

The survey asked about two types of stress: stress in one’s job or business (called “work stress” in this study) or stress in one’s life overall (called “life stress” in the paper). In this sample, a larger proportion of women than of men reported high levels of work and life stress. Women also reported lower job control, higher job strain (low job control coupled with high job demands), but also higher co-worker support. Men and women had similar levels of job insecurity and supervisor support in this study.

When it came to the interaction between psychosocial work factors and stress levels, the study did find a strong link between low supervisor support and greater stress (both life and work stress) among women. Among men, low supervisor support had no significant link with either type of stress. And the study found no differences between men and women when it came to the impact of low co-worker support, which was linked to greater stress at work (but not life in general) for both men and women.

Going into the study, the team also thought the link between work stress and life stress would be stronger for men than for women. That was based again on research elsewhere suggesting that men are more socialized to place a priority on work than women, who today still retain the primary responsibility for housework and childrearing. However, the results of the analysis showed that men and women were not different when it came to the strong link between work stress and life stress.

The team did find some unexpected sex/gender differences. One was a link between low job control and lower life stress among men, but not women. Another was the link between high job strain and higher life stress among women, but not men.

Padkapayeva cautioned against making too much of these anomalies, however. There could be something particular about this sample, and we look forward to seeing other studies confirming these patterns before we draw conclusions about them, she says.

Psychosocial hazards and stress levels in men and women

In the study on workplace psychosocial factors and stress levels in men and women, the research team at the Institute for Work & Health drew on the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey, administered by Statistics Canada.

Respondents were asked about stress related to their jobs or businesses (which the research team called "work stress") and stress in general ("life stress"). The arrows in the table below indicate greater (↑) or lower (↓) stress levels in association with the workplace psychosocial factors described. The long dashes (—) indicate no significant effect.

Differences were found between men and women for all factors but co-worker support.

Footer information

Stay Connected

Institute for Work & Health

We are an independent, not-for-profit organization. Our mission is to promote, protect and improve the safety and health of working people by conducting actionable research that is valued by employers, workers and policy-makers.